Right?

Not really, it’s not that I am not in favor of spending anything on marketing (in fact it’s quite the opposite); however you shouldn’t start spending heavily, at least before you’ve made the most of all those freely available platforms. Of course, all of these free marketing mediums will take some time, planning, and execution before you can reap the benefits; still it’s better than wasting hundreds on whatever option comes your way.

Let’s take a look at the five reasons why you shouldn’t spend heavily on Internet Marketing.

Reason #1 – SEO is free:

In spite of incessant grumblings and complaints coming from small businesses (about how hard it is becoming for small businesses to rank anywhere near the top) Search Engine Optimization is still a fundamentally free yet wonderful way to get new customers. It’s true that you need to spend some time on learning the nitty-gritty, and then spend even more time on creating content or building links for your website; still optimizing your website doesn’t necessarily require a spendthrift like many other advertising options.

It’s all about following some simple rules of seo and putting some extra efforts in creating good content on regular basis. And when we look at the rewards of getting top ranks for relevant key phrases, they are hard to match, since you will be getting a continuous stream of prospective customers searching at Google, and coming your way.

Reason #2 – Social Media is Free:

There’s a lot written on the grandeur of Social Media, and how you can use the sheer size of community to your advantage. The best part about all this is that social media is free and it doesn’t cost a dime to create a profile and get in touch with your target customers.

Remember that Social Media is not limited to just Facebook or Twitter, there are a lot and lot of websites that you can utilize, for example one of those social deal a day websites or some social networks catering your targeted market. Learn to create social media presence for your business.

Reason #3 – Blogging is Free:

Ok, not entirely free, as you will have to spend some bucks to get a domain and a web host, but launching a blog can benefit your small business in so many ways.

• First of all, you will build a lot of integrity by sharing valuable information related to your business or industry with your customers.
• Second, you will get to learn your target customers more via their feedback.
• Third you will be established as a credible person in your industry, and not to forget that you can add a store latter on to reap the benefits.

Blogging is a fun, it’s simple, and it sells.

Reason #4 – Email is Free

If you’re not ready to use any of the aforementioned mediums like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, or Blogging, you should at least make the most of the evergreen medium of Email Marketing. You can use the emails to get repeat sales from your existing customers, and you can also use the email newsletters to attract new customers.

It will take time in building an email subscriber’s list, but each new subscriber is an asset and worth the effort and wait. Learn why your business needs an email list.

Reason #5 – Google Places is free:

According to Google, 97% customers search online when they are looking for a local business. The number might change from one region to another (especially in less developed countries), but nobody can deny the fact that more and more customers are now developing a habit of doing an online search and price comparisons before taking the final decision.

So, it’s very important for you to get your business on Google places, which is free. Again, you can’t just stop at adding your business to their database, you will have to optimize your listing to appear on the top, but that shouldn’t cost you much.

So those are the five solid reasons you shouldn’t be spending anything on Internet Marketing, mainly because you have got so many wonderful yet free mediums in the offing.

image:ezypay

When you consider blogging as a business, you have to be think it as a real world business. Then only, you will be productive however i am not sure about your attitude. Basically, the following are the few more strategies you have to follow so that you could build a successful blog especially for the long term.

Employ Blog Business Strategy.

As i mentioned earlier, consider you blogging as a real world business. When it comes to business administration, you have to employ a proven strategy. That’s why i always advice: follow the successful strategy from others. This way, you don’t need to perform “from the scratch experiments” and you could directly move towards the success path.

First, have an action plan for your blogging business. Plan everything from content generation, monetization, marketing and traffic generation. Stick to your plan. To help you further, read this Kelly Watson’s approach of blogging business plan which tells you the basic ingredients of a simple blogging plan.

At the same time, go beyond blogging. Don’t just stick to content generation, identify the ways to help the audience in your market. Identify their problems and give better solutions to your audience. This is the basic rule of success in business. Also, work to create your own product related to your blog so that you could easily promote from your blog + it shows that you are an expert in the industry.

Basically, plan everything and important: follow the plan.

Utilize Social Media Tools.

Frankly, I am not a social media expert. However, i started making my presence in social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. As a first step, I started with Twitter and now having a good number of followers. I am feeling it useful especially in bringing back people to my blog, whenever i publish a blog post. Also, it helps to get networked with like minded people which readily helps in many ways, right from learning to sharing the thoughts.

And also, i am into Facebook and Google Plus. Slowly, i will make a strong presence there too and hold the people close to this blog.

• Follow Mr.Ven’s Twitter page
• Give me a Like on Facebook Fan Page

To help yourself in building a strong social media presence, go through the below resources:

• Driving Traffic with Twitter
• Using Facebook To Drive Traffic
• How Businesses Can Make the Most of Google Plus
• 9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion

Apart from the above resources, have a look on this Hubspot’s free webinar on Science of Social Media Marketing which has much more useful information.

As a tool, it helps you to keep the visitors close to your blog for the long term.

Keep Hold of Visitors In Your List.

List building is one of the powerful marketing tool for any online based business. This actually helps you a lot in blogging by holding each and every visitor coming to your blog. The advantage is that, you could catch the email ids of interested visitors and ping them back with more related information, as they like.

Successful Internet marketers are doing this in great extent by setting up a squeeze page (a single page to share an ebook/resource and getting back users email id). This way, you could collect the list of peoples who are related to the topic/blog and when you send related updates they will come back in your way. You could utilize this targeted list of promote products especially towards quickly making money. Further, as long as they are active in the subscription, you could ping them anytime with more useful stuffs which helps both the readers as well as your business.

If you are already using wordpress, there are many free plugins available to setup popup windows which asks visitors to get into your list.

• Wp Super Pop up (free) and Wp Subscribers (worth for money !) are few of the best plugins you could simply integrate to your blog which helps you to capture email ids of visitors coming to your blog.

2 ways to use email lists…

• Send periodic blog updates to the subscribers – Advantage: they will come back to your blog.
• Suggest useful products (your own/affiliate) related to your blog topic – Advantage: they will buy from your link.

More useful resources on List building…

• 4 Steps To Build An Email List from Mr.Ven
• 12 Ways to Build Your E-mail List from wilson web
• 4 Reasons Why Your Online Business Needs an Email List from Mitch

Hope all these information helps you in building a successful blog for the long term. Thanks for reading.

I will continue this series with the upcoming article which explains, how to rank well in search engines naturally ?

Stay tuned….

image: i95dev, lfs

Less Reliance on Google

Most online companies depend on search engines like Google to drive traffic to their site, but Google’s algorithm changes frequently, causing some sites to take a hit in the rankings. According to Google’s official blog, about 12% of search results were affected by their recent algorithm changes. It’s almost impossible to predict the changes that search engines will make – it’s much easier to have other options, such a substantial email list, to generate traffic and make money.

Easy to Introduce New Products and Offer Discounts

If you’re getting ready to sell a new product, a great way to have a booming launch day is to tell your email list recipients about it in advance and create some hype before the launch. It’s much easier to get your list of thousands of subscribers excited about a product than to try to catch the interest of a random user that found your site via a search engine or link.

For example, if you are selling Halloween costumes, you can send emails that advertise Harry Potter costumes.

Your email subject can be something like ‘Harry Potter costume accessories from HalloweenExpress.com‘. These emails are likely to get subscribers excited about (or at least aware of) your products and the products that your affiliate is advertising.

Create a Lasting Income Stream

Some sales methods (mostly in-person) only allow you to make one pitch – if the customer doesn’t buy, that’s it. With an email list, however, you have a way to contact your customers so you can pitch offers frequently, giving someone many different opportunities to buy if they chose not to in the past.

Sending an email may also remind people who have purchased from your company that your site is still available and sells great products. You may also ask customers to send you any feedback they have about your products and customer service. Users are likely to give honest opinions by email and their feedback may help you reach even more people.

Create A Closer Relationship With Customers

Since there are tokens in email programs, you can get on a first name basis with the customers on your list. It’s also easy for your list to email you and for you to reply – all of this leads to a closer relationship, often times giving you higher conversion rates for sales. Users who shop online usually want to have a relationship with the companies they buy from because it builds trust and makes them feel safer sending their financial information.

According to a survey that was conducted by ACI Worldwide, about half of all consumers from everywhere in the world worry about credit card fraud.

This means that companies who put in the extra effort to connect with people on a personal level are usually rewarded with repeat customers and more customers overall than companies who don’t interact with their customers or attempt to build relationships.

image:rmgimages

• why your business needs a mailing list

• The major advantage of building email list, you could ping the visitors anytime to come back to your site/blog. You could show a new product to them and drive more sales. Hence email list helps you to make more money anytime.

Long back, we discussed the Tips to build email list and i thought of consolidating the steps, which helps especially beginners. Okay, lets see those 3 instant steps to quickly build email list.

Step 1: Decide the Purpose of eMail List.

The foremost step, defining a purpose for this email campaign.

• Why do you build an email list ?
• Being clear, helps you to make the right steps towards building a huge list of targeted visitors.
• Either you want to sell products ? or you want to build a customer base around your site ?
• Or you want to make a newsletter kind of stuff to engage readers to your blog ?

Basically, decide the purpose of your email campaign before jumping to start.

Step 2: Your Offers To Bring People.

Next comes, what you offer the visitors to join your email list. The most simplest strategy of list building is “Give Aways”.

• Offering free downloads to the visitor upon signing up is the best strategy, to quickly make the visitors to sign up.
• The best give away, an ebook which explains about the topic/idea or it explains, how to solve a problem ?
• You could write your own ebook or simply, find a free book to give away.

Step 3: The Sign Up Page & Plugins.

You don’t need a bigger page with fancy images. A simply written sign up page with a subscription form is well enough.

• Give a big title. Write short introduction, on what you are offering free and its value (for example, say that you are giving an ebook of value $100 FREE).

For wordpress users, simply install this G-Lock Double Opt-In plugin (its FREE to use) which makes everything for you. It has many features to send bulk marketing emails or simply, install a newsletter system on your blog apart from creating sign up pages.

Step 4: Bring In Traffic To Sign Up Page.

The toughest part of email list building is bringing the right visitors to the signup page. If you have a high traffic blog already then its an easy job.

• For low traffic blogs, you could write a guest post in multiple blogs which are related to your topic/domain and leave the sign up page URL in author bio. This way, you could simply bring in more visitors to your sign up page.
• Otherwise, advertise your sign up page using PPC Ads like Google Adwords, YSM, Facebook Ads etc. Use the right keywords to bring targeted visitors to your sign up page.

What Next ? Your email list grows….

Final Thoughts.

Building an email list is a simple task provided you are able to bring huge traffic to the signup page. Your job actually starts once you have huge people in your list and it depends on, how well you manage the readers to stay in the list longer. Few tips for effectively utilizing email lists.

• Don’t force the visitor to sign up.
• At the same time, ask every visitor to sign up (a change to maximum extent).
• Don’t spam your email list with huge number of emails.
• Don’t recommend poor products which doesn’t adds value to the buyer.
• Don’t sell/disclose the email list to third parties.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tool in Internet. To mention, a recent report released by econsultancy says that, more number of buyers are triggered through email marketing than social media or any other means, check here.

image:jay

• creating mailing list step by step

To help you, i have complied the list of 9 useful plugins which definitely helps you to manage email related activities on your wordpress blog. Have a look and use the one that best suites your requirement.

Email Management Made Simple !

Transpose Email – Because of increasing number of email spammers, you may want to hide your email id on your blog post. But how to show your email in cases, where you want to really show your email address to your readers ? There comes the plugin Transpose Email which shows the email id as encoded java script link and on clicking, it composes an outlook mail too.

Email Users – A plugin used to send emails to the registered wordpress users. It has the option to send email to selected individuals or to a group of registered users. Moreover, it does the same job of feed burner like sending emails to the subscribers whenever there is an update of blog post or page. Looks the plugin page has forum where you could clarify any doubts in using this plugin.

New User Email Set Up – This plugin helps you to send a greeting email message as soon as a person registers to your wordpress blog. An automatic email sender where you could tell about your blog or welcome the newly registered user through a message. It supports HTML formatted messages so that you could add images, formatted texts too.

Email Commenters – This a great plugin which helps you to simply send an email to all the people who have added comments to a particular blog post. There may be cases arise (when there is an update/important change on the blog post) where you want to contact all the commentators of that specific page, this plugin sends a mail on a click. It actually shows a link “Mail the commenters on this post” and clicking on it sends email.

Email Alerts – Plugin which alerts you whenever there is a new comment posted on your blog or a new post is posted. This actually helps more for multiuser wordpress blogs where, you could give access to your users to moderate the blog comments.

For example, if you are on holiday you could setup this plugin to allow moderation access to any other user. And more interestingly, it alerts you whenever a comment is waiting for approval.

Commenter Emails – A plugin which instantly gets you the list of all commenters email ids. It actually gives you the emails ids of all the people who have written a comment on your blog so far. It exports the list as .csv file. This is an interesting plugin using this you could contact all the people who have commented on your blog. It considers only the approved commenters email id.

Feedburner Email Widget – This plugin makes the job simpler by placing the feedburner widget at the required place in your blog. In actual, you don’t need to manually copy the code from feedburner. Instead, installing this plugin and configuring with your RSS feed is enough to enable.

WP Responder – An alternative to aweber and other paid email management services. It supports subscription forms, newsletter support same like Feedburner/aweber. And autoresponder support where you could compose and schedule emails to the large list of registered users. It has the option to import email list from feed burner. A FREE and perfect alternative to Aweber. If you don’t want to use any paid email management service then WP Responser is a perfect choice for your blog. I am planning to use this very soon !

Email Subscription Box After Post – A plugin which simply places the feed burner subscription box under every wordpress blog post. Install and configure with your feed burner settings, its up !

Its quite easy to manage email related activities on your blog using these wordpress plugins.

image: Tim

• wordpress email plugin
• email
• wordpress automatic email
• change automatic email on wordpress
• wordpress blog posts to email subscribers
• wordpress email blog

Yes, e-mail marketing is such an ideal marketing platform, if you are running an online business. By definition, it is method of communicating to the public using e-mails that carries information about your business. (if you felt bored with this definition, find out what wikipedia says about Email Marketing).

Advantages of Using Email Marketing.

Now we are clear about what is email marketing. Lets digg into more about the advantages of using email marketing in your business.

• It helps to reach all your business contacts instantly (within seconds) and to update them with your message. So it is an effective broadcast medium.
• Keeping the customers close to your business. Hence increasing the repeat visitors so called Customers.
• It helps to remind the customers about your business, products & offers every time.
• Email marketing helps to build the trust with the visitors especially those who are joining your email list for the first time.
• You could easily show and build your business brand before the eyes of the readers.
• The greater advantage is that email marketing is dead cheaper when compared to other methods of business promotion.

Needs Your E-Mail Now

image: 28 Dreams

Tips To Use Email Marketing To Promote Online Business.

Now we are very much clear about the advantages of using email marketing for your online business. Lets go through the tips that are effective and proven means to utilize the full potential of email marketing.

Select Email Marketing Software.

You have to select the best email marketing service. Your email marketing software should have professional templates design and easy to manage the email list. One of the best & affordable email marketing service is Aweber and Microsoft’s Email solutions.

Build Your Email List.

Building your email list is the most crucial part of email marketing. There are ways to buy a bulk list of email contacts and that works bad most of the time. Building natural and organic email list works really good for the long term. You have to ask each and very visitor of your business web site to join your email list. But don’t force the visitors instead give them a call-to-join your network. You could list down the advantages or offers that you give upon joining your email list. This article helps you with great tips to build email list especially for your online based business.

Be Professional & Show Your Business Brand.

You should have a professional approach in marketing your business through emails. Never spam with junk or irrelevant information in the email. You have to use the touch of your business brand through out the email conversation. You should thank the visitors after joining to the email list and always provide them the option to unsubscribe from the list. In fact, that builds the trust between your reader and your business. The success of email marketing depends on how well every mail goes professionally to your readers.

Have a Emailing Plan.

You should have a schedule to broadcast the emails. Once in a week or a month based on the information that you have about your business. Consolidating the events and sending them as a monthly/weekly newsletter is more effective instead of ping them on daily basis. Be sure that you are conveying valuable information through your emails. Don’t send same kind of information, plan for variety of messages with different templates maintaining the brand image.

The major goal of email marketing is reminding your customers about the existence of your business. It is the best medium to instantly contact the public to give an update and to encourage your readers. Email marketing takes time to work but for sure it promotes your online business to next level of success. In short, email marketing is a long term method of business promotion that you should hire.

• creating an email to promote a business
• how to promote business using email
• how to promote your business through email
• how to promote your business via email
• market your business via email
• messages to promote business

E-mail marketing is the wonderful broadcast medium available for online business owners. It is mandatory to build your Email list taking some efforts for making a better shaped business. In fact, it gives an excellent opportunity for the customers to stay connected with the business owners (we).

Building your E-mailing list takes more time and that grows gradually along with your business. It brings in more customers for your business in turn making more money. Its a proven communication medium. Targeted E-mail marketing builds network or a community around your online business.

Don’t Force Visitors To Join Your E-mail List, They Will Run Away.

Never force your website visitors to get registered with your e-mailing list. It should happen naturally but at the same time, don’t forget to ask the user for joining the E-mail list. You must get that okay from the visitor before joining your email list. If you force the visitor he won’t like you, simply he goes away from your business. Forcing breaks the trust on your business and your activities. So don’t force people to subscribe.

Keep Your Business Network Stay Tuned, Bring Them Under A Loop.

Always keep your network with up-to-date information. You must ping your members atleast once in two days. Don’t make your members to forget you and your business. Have a posting schedule and ping them with your information timely. But don’t spam. This makes a feel among the members that you are alive and active. This builds the confidence and makes them to realize the importance of your business and your services at any time. Also, this makes your members to come back to your business web site in more frequent duration. Its stay tuned, right ?

“Call To Join” Works Better To Grow The List, Easy And Faster Way.

In order to improve and build your e-mail list, call-to-join works good. In business, a call-to-action makes tough things to work. Your homepage must call your visitors to join for an e-mail subscription. Even the others pages should give some space for a sign-up form. The best place to have the e-mail subscription form is the left or the right panel of your web site. Also, it is good to have the sign-up form at the bottom of every page after the content gets over, ie. in the footer. This gives the visitors more visibility to find out the e-mail subscription form. Have phrases like, “Join Now”, “Subscribe Free” etc that makes more sense.

Give Free Offer For A Subscription.

You could give your visitor some free offers for subscribing to your site. Some of the free offers are like giving ebooks with useful information, giving discount coupons or providing detailed information in your site only for subscribers. This adds a value to your visitors for subscribing to the email list. But never force them as I told before.

Building Email List Through Advertising, Fishing For Customers With A Net.

If you are ready to invest some amount of money to build your email network, you could start an advertising campaign for promoting your website. This builds your email list quickly and drives more targeted subscribers. But there are always free ways of advertising your site that drives more visitors for subscription. Some of the well known free methods are like submitting articles to public sites like ezine, articlebase etc. exposing URLs in forums, adding your site to free classifieds, asking for friends to add a link from their website or blog to your subscription page. You could try out the real world advertising techniques like supplying printed posters, vehicle advertising etc. Keep in mind, you are building a targeted email list through this way. Find more on Free Advertising Your Online Business.

Quality Come Here Also, I Can;t Avoid Saying This.

Serving quality products or publishing quality content automatically builds your email list. If you have quality in hand then no one will avoid you, I am sure the public supports your business. So keep quality as first and do that in consistent, success nears your business soon. Your email list grows without much efforts.

Bonus Tips.

If none of the above tips doesn’t works for you, there is an alternative way. Buy an email list for money. You should select the right vendor here who is selling original, quality email lists. You could try Microsoft Email Solutions.

I hope these tips really helps you to build your email list and hence the email marketing strategy of your business to great extent.

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